Patrick Belville is rejoining Jones Day's Detroit office after a four-year stint as an assistant general counsel at the legal giant's longtime client and Fortune 15 health-care business Cardinal Health Inc., the firm announced this week.

Patrick Belville

Belville served as associate general counsel for M&A at Cardinal Health and also directed legal support for tax, treasury, capital markets and other corporate functions at the Dublin, Ohio-based company, Jones Day said. He will join a 23-lawyer-strong Detroit office that the firm opened in 2015 following Jones Day's representation of the Motor City in a groundbreaking bankruptcy case. Belville previously was a partner in the firm's Chicago office from 2007 to 2014.

“This is another step forward in our ongoing process, underway since we opened in late 2015, to attract world-class talent to our Detroit office,” said a statement from Timothy Melton, Jones Day's Detroit managing partner. “In combination with our [f]irmwide resources, the Detroit [o]ffice offers access to an array of legal talent and capabilities that makes us unique in this market—and across the globe.”

The expansion of the office is a sign of the long-lasting relationship Jones Day has created with Detroit since earning nearly $60 million in legal fees as the city's bankruptcy counsel. Among the handful of Am Law 100 firms that pitched Detroit to be its bankruptcy counsel, including Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; Sidley Austin; Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom; and Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Jones Day is the lone firm to have since opened an office in Detroit.

Still, the connection has not been without controversy. Last year, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan had threatened to sue Jones Day over what he said was a misrepresentation of the city's pension liability following its 2014 exit from bankruptcy court. Jones Day's longtime managing partner Stephen Brogan responded to the threat by slamming Duggan as a “political hack.”

Belville is not the only lawyer from the firm's Detroit office to head in-house. Bryan Zair, a former M&A partner in the office hired from Mayer Brown in 2015, left late last year to join transportation services company Sasser Family Holdings Inc. as general counsel.

The firm's Detroit office got a boost in 2016 with the addition of former Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn vice chairman Arthur O'Reilly, a litigation partner who was joined last year at Jones Day by former Honigman Miller colleague Emily Tait. Nearly a year ago, Jones Day also added Stephen Cowen, a former senior counsel at The Boeing Co., as of counsel for its litigation group in Detroit.

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